Massachusetts to hold same-sex weddings
Find a Conversation
| Sun, 05-16-2004 - 12:31pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Gay%20Marriage%20New%20Era
Sunday, May 16, 2004 · Last updated 6:34 a.m. PT
Massachusetts to hold same-sex weddings
By DAVID CRARY
AP NATIONAL WRITER
For better or for worse, depending on which side of the ideological aisle one chooses, a divided America crosses a historic threshold Monday as state-approved marriages of same-sex couples take place for the first time.
Promised a waiver of the normal three-day waiting period, the seven gay and lesbian couples who successfully sued for marriage rights in Massachusetts will wed before relatives, friends and supporters in Boston and three other towns. The United States will become just the fourth country in the world where same-sex couples can tie the knot.
The couples' jubilation will be shared by gay-rights advocates across the country, including many in states such as New York, California, Washington and New Jersey where comparable lawsuits are moving forward.
"This isn't just one historic moment in Massachusetts," said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal. "It's the start of what will be a long period of progress and breakthroughs, with gay couples in other states also winning the right to marry."
For foes of gay marriage, Monday's weddings represent a stinging defeat - but one they hope will be reversed by a backlash among politicians and voters nationwide.
"What I'm starting to see is people who are apolitical, who never got involved before, saying, 'This is too much - we don't want same-sex marriage foisted on us,'" said Mathew Staver, president of a Florida-based legal group, Liberty Counsel, that is opposing gay marriage in numerous court cases.
Both sides in the debate expect the issue to figure prominently in the November election, with Massachusetts serving as a rallying cry and alarm bell.
Candidates for Congress will face pressure to explain their position on a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. Voters in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Missouri and Utah - and probably several other states - will consider similar amendments to their state constitutions.
"It will be a national referendum about gays and gay marriage," said Rod McKenzie of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "We're the underdog when it comes to all these ballot measures - the scale is bigger than we've ever had to deal with."
In states with the ballot measures, divisive campaigns already are underway.
An Oklahoma gay-rights group, for example, took out newspaper ads last week showing an outline of the state with "Closed" stamped over it. The ad contended that businesses would leave - or stay away - if voters approved the constitutional ban on gay marriage.
State Sen. James Williamson, a Republican from Tulsa, called the ad outrageous and predicted that a ban would attract new businesses.
"There is a real hunger for a return to traditional values and for leaders who will draw a line in the sand to help stop the moral decay of this country," he said.
Nationwide, both sides are planning marches and rallies over the coming week - among them, pro-gay marriage events in Iowa City, Iowa, and Las Cruces, N.M., and a "Not on My Watch" rally in Arlington, Texas, for pastors opposed to gay marriage.
Also following the Massachusetts events with interest will be the thousands of gay couples who married in recent months with the encouragement of local officials in San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and a handful of other municipalities.
Those marriages are clouded by varying degrees of legal uncertainty, and even in Massachusetts there is a possibility that voters in 2006 could jeopardize the impending marriages by approving a constitutional ban.
Katie Potter, a Portland policewoman who married partner Pam Moen in March, said she was delighted by the Massachusetts developments yet worried that it could take years for marriage rights to extend nationally.
"It's important for my two children to be able to say, 'My parents are married,'" Potter said.
Anti-gay marriage activists have no sympathy for such arguments.
"If we move down the road to legalizing marriage for unnatural homosexual couples, it will lead to an explosion of intentionally motherless or fatherless households," said Dave Smith of the Indiana Family Institute. "That is a radical social experiment that will place children in harm's way."
Though opinion polls show that most Americans oppose gay marriage, the rate of acceptance is much higher among people under 30 - for the younger generation, polls show a roughly even split on the issue.
"There's an absolute inevitability there," said Lambda Legal's Cathcart. "There's no reason to think the next generation of young people will go backward."
Mathew Staver, referring to the same demographic trends, said the next 18 months would be critical for gay-marriage foes.
"The window is now to pursue a federal marriage amendment that would put a halt to this nonsensical patchwork of litigation," said the Liberty Counsel attorney.
Even if many Americans wish otherwise, Massachusetts, as of Monday, will join the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada's three most populous provinces as the only places worldwide where gays can marry, though the rest of Canada expected to follow soon.
In the Netherlands, which pioneered gay marriage three years ago, the practice now stirs little controversy. Cheryl Jacques, a former Massachusetts legislator who now heads the Human Rights Campaign, a major gay-rights group, hopes her compatriots eventually emulate the Dutch.
"For the vast majority of Americans, Monday will be a completely ordinary day - nothing's going to change," she said. "But for some Americans in Massachusetts - gay and lesbian families - it will be a truly historic day, when their families will be made stronger and their children will become safer."
"I'm very proud of my state," Jacques added. "Massachusetts is going to teach the rest of the country a lesson - equality doesn't hurt anyone."
---
Lambda Legal: http://www.lambdalegal.org/
Liberty Counsel: http://www.lc.org/
cl-nwtreehugger
Community Leader: In The News & Sports Talk
I can also be found at Washington, TV Shows & QOTW

Pages
<<>>
Apples and oranges.
When you're intending to shoot someone and you ask them if they believe in God and THEN tell them to start praying, it's for psychological effect - they know they're going to die, and you've done the "humanitarian" thing by allowing them to make peace with God before you kill them.
Shooting a homosexual because they're homosexual is completely different.
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
No its not. Not to mention the fact that a moral and/or religious basis has been completely dismissed as a point to argue from by those defending GL marriage. It is disingenuous to use it now to support your argument after throwing it away up to this point.
>Marriage isn't a privilege as you'd like to assert because if it were, there wouldn't be >laws governing marriage
So with that reasoning the following are fundamental rights because we have laws governing them.
* Pet ownership
* Drivers license
* Internet Access
* Telephone Usuage
* Riding rides at an amusement park
* Ordering HBO
Just because a law exist to govern something it doesn't mean it is a right.
Yet everyone from the left has refused to answer these basic points and I won't let them go until they are addressed:
1. Why does a civil union not grant the equality you seek?
2.
Give me a biological, medical, or moral reason to outlaw incest that doesn't relate to procreation?
A 30 year old man and his 50 year old mother. Lets even add that they were separated at birth. Illegal. Tell me why?
A 30 year old man wants to marry 2 women, or men. Tell me why that should be outlawed?
This is in response to post:
http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elinthenews&msg=6563.196
When you're intending to shoot someone and you ask them if they believe in God and THEN tell them to start praying, it's for psychological effect - they know they're going to die, and you've done the "humanitarian" thing by allowing them to make peace with God before you kill them.
*************************
What! Humanitarian thing? So if Hitler gave the Jews a chance to pray first it is a humantiarian way to kill them?
*********************
Shooting a homosexual because they're homosexual is completely different. I'm surprised you don't see that, really.
*********************
So lets see....shooting a Christian for being a Christian is different then
shooting a homosexual for being a homosexual
or
a black for being a black
Interesting logic. You're right, I don't see the difference. Hatred is hatred, at least in my view. I don't qualify it based on a person's characteristics.
I'm glad you pointed folks to the Constitution - and for a more EXACT roadmap of where they can find the separation of church and state, I'll add that they can refer to the 1st Amendment.
I'd like to point YOU to the writings of Thomas Jefferson - who authored "The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom," considered to be one of the most important separationist documents in our nation's history.
Additionally, he wrote "...(O)ur rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. In neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg (Notes on Virginia, 1785. "
Hope this helps with your confusion regarding the separation of church and state.
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- Bob Day, Marriage Equality Rally, Rochester NY
Help in the fight against a constitutional amendment!
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
<<>>
In your opinion, that is.
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
<<<Vader, I am sure, was refering to better majority of BIO parents who step up to the plate and be a parent, there are few who fail in this area. >>>
Yeah - that's why there are hardly ANY dead-beat non-custodial parents in this country.
Riiiiggggghhhhhhttttt!
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- Bob Day, Marriage Equality Rally, Rochester NY
Help in the fight against a constitutional amendment!
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
I kept meaning to look this up and just got around to it.
<<<Marriage is not defined in the US by Christianity it is simply guided by it. >>>
Semantics - what's the difference?
<<>>>
Then why do the right-wing, and the GOP keep using the term "sanctity of marriage?"
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- Bob Day, Marriage Equality Rally, Rochester NY
Help in the fight against a constitutional amendment!
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
<<>>
That arrogant statement just screams VOLUMES on what's truly wrong with this country today.
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- Bob Day, Marriage Equality Rally, Rochester NY
Help in the fight against a constitutional amendment!
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
<<>>
Well then, given that analogy, Christianity should show deference to all NATIVE AMERICAN spirituality.
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
Pages